Minerva’s View’s purpose is to provide information and a channel for dialogue on how to face and engage with the future, while also taking care of ourselves and our loved ones. Between the election of leaders who have declared their opposition to climate action and accelerating global heating and severe climate consequences, many people are choosing to focus on our own well-being or are distracting ourselves with social media and entertainment. What is the right balance between self-care and being warriors for a better future? We invite you to join us in exploring the tension between the desire to disengage and to protect ourselves vs. the imperative to engage with more effectiveness than we have ever mustered before.
What can we do to protect federal policy, institutions, and workers? What can we do to promote even stronger State and Local action to address climate change at scale?
What more can we do to stimulate systemic changes through institutions (companies,
governments, educational and non-profit entities) and as citizens, voters and neighbors?
Minerva’s View illuminates inspiring examples of innovative people, technologies,
projects, companies, and agencies. Please share with us what you are doing or what
help you need to move forward in the communities where you live.
Our monthly Climate Leaders meetings focus on how each of us is advancing positive momentum, while taking care of ourselves and our loved ones. We invite you to join us!
Events
Climate Leaders Monthly Meeting
Thursday, February 20, 4:00 - 5:00 PM PT
Join the Climate Leaders Meeting to exchange resources and inspiration with others who are working to create a vibrant and healthy future.
All leaders are welcome.
This is a monthly on-line event hosted by Minerva Ventures.
Opportunities for Action
An Excellent List of Climate Action Organizations
Katharine Hayhoe has created an excellent, comprehensive list for those of us looking for organizations where we can work together on climate action. And here is a link to a website that supports state and local climate action with an action plan, events, and lots of other resources.
Keeping Up with the Trump/Vance Administration’s Climate Actions
The Climate Backtracker is a website hosted by the Sabin Center for Climate Change that provides a comprehensive list, with links and a summary, of the administration’s efforts to scale back or wholly eliminate federal climate mitigation and adaptation measures.
Local and State Action Will Be Key
Inside Climate News interviewed environmental activists around the country about the impact of the first round of actions by the new administration. Much of this won’t make the news, but perhaps we can do something about that. We can make these impacts known so that people in your state understand the negative impacts on them. This can be a catalyst for organizing to stop harm.
Learn to Talk to People Who Don’t Agree
The 2024 election made it clear that we need to bridge political and cultural divides. Here are some resources that can help: For climate, check out Talk Like A Human, a guide from the Potential Energy Coalition. More broadly, for everything, Braver Angels has training and resources, as well as local groups you can join.
Thoughts on Hope and Personal Resilience
These interviews with faith leaders and climate activists from various backgrounds provide insights into how we might help ourselves and others develop strength and resilience.
The Importance of Corporate Sustainability Leadership
Thoughts from leaders including Heather Clancy of Trellis Group, Patrick Flynn of Switchboard, Matthew Sekol of Microsoft and author of ESG Mindset, Jennifer Allyn of ClimateVoice, and Anne L. Kelly of Ceres, Inc.
And from the Harvard Business Review, strategy recommendations for corporations who want to make a difference.
Know What is Happening At the State Level
A Compendium of Climate Books From Heatmap
Domains for Climate Action
Food and Agriculture
Extracting Essential Ammonia Fertilizer From Thin Air
Nitrogen fertilizer is a key, but extremely carbon intensive, ingredient in our modern global food system. Making it the way we do today consumes 2% of global energy and contributes 1% of annual carbon dioxide emissions. A new device created by researchers at Stanford and researchers from Saudi Arabia can produce it by using wind energy to draw air through a mesh. In the future the device might be integrated into irrigation systems, enabling farmers to generate fertilizer directly from the air. More here.
This Simple Eating Change is Better for You and the Planet
If everyone adopted the “Planetary Health Diet,” scientists say it would shave about 5 percent off global greenhouse emissions and prevent more than 7 million premature deaths per year from illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes. It doesn’t require giving up meat, but does recommend a change to the composition of our diets.
Energy
An Alternative to Diesel Generators After Climate Disasters
Instead of diesel generators, The Footprint Project is working to create a solar-powered microgrid “lending library” to provide local, targeted clean energy so urgently needed after disasters, as well as building solar microgrids in roughly communities since their inception just a few years ago.
Next Gen Geothermal: The Next Big Thing In Green Energy
According to the IEA, new geothermal systems could technically provide as much as 600 terawatts of carbon-free power capacity by 2050. If these new technologies can successful tap the truly deep and hot reserves cost-effectively, the geothermal sector could generate around 4,000 petawatt-hours of electricity per year — enough to meet the world’s power demand 140 times over.
Finance
Circular Economy/Materials
Extracting Fertilizer and Minerals from Wastewater
Professor Tarpeh’s lab at Stanford is developing processes that apply advanced membrane materials and electrochemical processes to efficiently separate pure molecules from mixtures. Watch a video of his recent talk.
Water/Natural Resources/Biodiversity
Microbes May Have A Role in Mitigating Climate Change
When glacial ice melts it releases methane, which is very bad news for the climate. However, recent research indicates that microbes in glacial rivers and lakes consume methane before it escapes into the atmosphere, and thus needs to be taken into account in climate models of the impacts of this melting.
Built Environment
In the face of increasing temperatures, communities are coming together to increase the livability of their local environments. Adding shade structures In Phoenix and rebuilding reefs and repopulating oysters in Alabama are among the solutions.
Transportation
This Solutions Covers Parking Lots with Solar Powered EV Charging
Delivered by truck and installed in a day, the Papillio3 by 3ti.co.uk is perfect for places where people park for an extended period.
Health
Climate Interventions:
Regeneration, Methane, Geoengineering, CCUS
An Antacid for the Ocean Could Cool the Earth
Dissolving acid-neutralizing rocks in the ocean would have it absorb more carbon dioxide while also reducing dangerous levels of acidification. The technology is being applied successfully at a small scale today, with millions being spent by climate ventures and philanthropic funders to bring it to scale.
Adaptation and Resilience
Policy
How Can California Better Adapt To Wildfire Risk?
Intensifying “defensible space” rules and modifying building codes, includeing requiring more space between buildings, a five foot area with nothing flambile around every building, and a half-mile buffer zone between wild lands and neighborhoods. government agencies offer homeowners money to move — a strategy sometimes called managed retreat. She said it’s time to consider applying that idea to areas exposed to wildfires.
Perhaps the most aggressive type of adaptation is simply being honest. Officials should start telling people in dangerous areas that their homes can’t be protected, according to Michele Steinberg, the wildfire division director with the National Fire Protection Association. Read more.
Climate News
Bloomberg Pledges to Replace US Funding for UN Climate Efforts
American billionaire Michael Bloomberg has announced that his philanthropy and other climate funders will step in to cover US financial obligations to the United Nations climate body after President Donald Trump ordered a halt to contributions.
Biden’s North Star Climate Goal for the US
President Biden has declared an ambitious new climate goal of reducing emissions 61 percent below 2005 levels by 2035. The U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of governors representing nearly 60 percent of the U.S. economy and 55 percent of the U.S. population, has pledged to work to achieve the new goal. “The Biden-Harris administration may be about to leave office, but we’re confident in America’s ability to rally around this new climate goal,” John D. Podesta, senior adviser to the president for international climate policy, said on a call with reporters. “While the United States federal government under President Trump may put climate action on the back burner, the work to contain climate change is going to continue in the United States with commitment and passion.” More here.
AI is Helping Refine Climate Forecasting, And The News Is Not Good
Using a mix of current data and climate models is allowing AI to create the most confident predictions of future temperatures. One prediction: even if we reach net zero by the 2050s, we have a nine-in-ten chance of a year this century at least 1.8°C above the pre-industrial baseline, with a two-in-three chance for at least 2.1°C. These results point to the importance of investing heavily in adaptation to help increase livability in the face of the coming climate impacts. More here.
Nobel Laureates Call for Urgent Action to Avert Global Hunger
More than 150 Nobel and World Food prize laureates have signed an open letter calling for “moonshot” efforts to ramp up food production before an impending world hunger catastrophe caused by a combination of climate crises, war and market pressures.
Climate Change Added 41 Days of Dangerous Heat in 2024
The analysis from World Weather Attribution and Climate Central researchers concluded that, in addition to the 41 days of dangerous heat, climate change intensified 26 of the 29 weather events studied. “Climate change did play a role, and often a major role in most of the events we studied, making heat, droughts, tropical cyclones and heavy rainfall more likely and more intense across the world, destroying lives and livelihoods of millions and often uncounted numbers of people,” according to Friederike Otto, the lead of World Weather Attribution and an Imperial College climate scientist.
Montana Court Sides With Climate Activists
The December 6-1 ruling by the Montana State Supreme Court that the state’s permitting of fossil fuel projects without consideration for climate change violates residents’ constitutional right to a clean environment is a major, and rare, victory.
Landmark Report on the Complex Interconnections Between Major Global Systems
The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) has published The Assessment Report on the Interlinkages Among Biodiversity, Water, Food and Health – known as the Nexus Report. The report is the most ambitious scientific assessment ever undertaken of these complex interconnections and explores more than five dozen specific response options to maximize co-benefits across five ‘nexus elements’: biodiversity, water, food, health and climate change.
About Minerva Ventures:
Are you concerned about climate change and seeking ways to take action? Business survival depends on addressing competitive challenges every day. Leaders attend to urgent business matters while counting on tomorrow’s weather and operating conditions to be similar to yesterday’s. What happens when underlying conditions change as climate consequences become more severe? It is hard to adjust to a disruptive future while you are focused on competing today.
Minerva advises clean tech companies on strategic and business development. We help you find customers, new markets, and new investors to build your momentum and success. Minerva helps established companies create strategies to identify and contend with climate risks to your business. Discover how you can protect your operations, assets, products, and services. Understand how climate risk will affect your suppliers, customers, and partners. Determine how you can strengthen your company to navigate change and seize opportunities as markets reconfigure in the face of the coming changes. Find innovative ways to change your operations, products, and services to help address climate change. Consider policy measures that your industry can pursue that will help address shared risks.
Minerva can help you find new solutions that will make your business more resilient and adaptable to change. Your company will be advancing climate solutions rather than just reacting to disruptions to your industry and markets.
Visit Minerva Ventures’ website at MinervaVentures.com!
Newsletter Editor: Dinyah Rein, Consultant, Minerva Ventures, LLC
Managing Partner: Marianna Grossman, Minerva Ventures, LLC
Copyright (C) 2024 Minerva Ventures. All rights reserved.
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